Oh no, you don't get to define the terms of a general discussion. You said, "Balance at the expense of believability will be rebuked at my table." That means the entire friggen game is fair for this discussion...and let me tell you this discussion can go on a long time. I have not even gotten to some of the juicier topics yet. I will, eventually, expose where you accept something for balance reasons at the expense of believability, because we all do. Because it's a game.
Let me be clear, I think that statement is true for the entire game. For this particular thread; however, we are talking about shared actions. If you want to talk about other aspects of the game that also need to be fixed, I'm more than willing to discuss solutions to those issues in a general thread about the topic.
I am asking about your existing house rules, not future ones. I am betting you have tolerated plenty of things for balance reasons at the expense of believability at your table in the past, while you hold others to a different standard in this thread.
We generally only tolerate things if they are seldom used or the rules become far too complicated otherwise. Even still, we will opt for abstractions that don't cause make the game feel like a contrived boardgame.
OK so system shock roll means you can survive, and nobody cares about equipment we're talking about surviving a fall from a high cliff purely because you are high level. So in your game, you have accepted that high level people survive a fall off a high cliff to the rocks below, but low level people do not, because...it's believable? Please do explain.
Surviving is fine. There is nothing wrong with that. Heck even the 2e PHB provided examples of people who have fallen from great heights and still survived. High level PCs surviving more often can also be justified by accepting that much of that damage is luck / fate based.
Of course, I have played with lower hit point totals and even save or die falling mechanics. To a large extent 2e is a great system for that because the max hit point totals are far lower.
Now, if you came to my game upset about how unbelievable the falling rules are, I would work with you to fix it, but I will not under any circumstance accept one bad rule because other bad rules exist. If you think a rule doesn't make sense I'll most likely agree with you.
Of course, the falling rules are not used that often. They don't consistently create a jarring issue every round, like the shared action rule does. In comparison, falling rules would be low on the hit list for things that need to be fixed.
I am not complaining about anything, and I am asking what you did in the past not what you will do in the future to try and get around a question. Either you never sacrifice any believability at the expense of balance in your games, or you do accept some. The past is the determiner of that answer.
I would strive to remove such rules at all costs. You can point out a dozen other rules that don't make sense, but as I've said I'd house rule that crap away or I'll just refuse to play that system. I'd rather play the system that strives to at least include rules that are believable and consistent.
It's also a fallacy to suggest that rules can't be believable AND balanced. The two are not mutually exclusive.
